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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

I've launched a little food-related project in conjunction with the folks at Fooducopia, a site where small food producers sell their products. My part in this is that I'll be creating recipes specifically for products sold on the Fooducopia site. This is one of those recipes.

Fooducopia supplies me with products to write about and when I saw the jar of Gilberto's Sort of Smokin' Mango Salsa waiting for me, I wondered if there would be something different enough about it that would inspire a new recipe. I mean, there are a lot of salsas out there. And I've made plenty of my own salsas.

A lot of salsas are very similar to each other. Tomatoes, onions, peppers. There are only so many ways you can combine them. Most of them are good, but a lot of them are also similar to each other.

I cracked open the jar the new salsa and introduced it to a chip. And then another one and another one. It was a miracle that I managed to put the jar away while there was still enough to use in a recipe. Yep, there are a lot of salsas out there, but this one got it right. A good balance of flavors and the right amount of heat so you can eat it plain without blowing puffs of smoke out your ears or burning out your tastebuds.

Maybe you like hotter salsas, and that's okay. I've eaten - and liked - hotter salsas. But this one, right off the bat, had a lot of potential for recipes because it had all that interesting flavor along with the heat.

I knew that I needed to come up with a recipe where the salsa was a major flavor component instead of an accent.

I think this one fits the bill.

The idea for this recipe started with the idea of eggs in purgatory where eggs are baked in a tomato sauce. I've done the same thing with eggs baked in salsa. You end up with eggs that are like poached eggs, but they're in the tomato sauce.

But ... it's summer. No one is going to want to bake eggs. So I poached them instead.

The other ideas rattling around in my head were nachos and chilaquiles. When I combined them all and teased them apart again, this is what I got. It's great for a spicy breakfast, or for a light lunch.

To be clear, I'm not reviewing or endorsing the products in this recipe (unless I saw otherwise). I've created the recipe for Fooducopia to post its site and I'm re-posting the recipe here for my readers as well. Then again, since I created the recipe, rest assured that I liked it. I don't cook stuff that we're not going to eat.

Cookbook author and food writer for Serious Eats, Whisk Magazine, and the Left Hand Valley Courier, among others. Columnist at American Recycler. Blogger at www.cookistry.com and reviews.cookistry.com.